Monday, October 26, 2009

With every new obsession comes new questions asked by my mother. Every time mom hears me listening to Bob Dylan, she just has to ask what the songs are about. Time after time I have to tell her they have no meaning. Sure, they may have intention, but they have no real meaning. Some songs are obvious what the intention is, like Ballad in Plain D is about his relationship with Suze Rotolo, but not all of them do. In the movie Dont Look Back (and yes, the absence of the apostrophe was intentional), there's a scene where Dylan is being interviewed by a man from Time magazine. His words are , and I quote "...I have nothing to say about the things I write. I just write 'em. I don't have to say anything about them, I don't write them for any reason, there's no great message. If you want to tell other people that, go ahead and tell them." But there are some people who think that Dylan is such a genius that everything he says, and does, has a meaning in there somewhere. On December 3rd, 1965, there was a press conference in San Fransisco. The first question was from the creepiest looking guy ever, who asked if there was a meaning to the cover of the album with Subterranean Homesick Blues on it (that would be Bringing It All Back Home, but by the way they are describing it, I think he was talking about Highway 61 Revisited). He thought that the motorcycle on his shirt was "...an image in [his] songwriting...", where Dylan said that we all like motorcycles and the photo was taken one day when he was sitting on the steps. So there mom, if I have to explain to you one more time that I don't know how Edie Sedgwick has had so many songs written about her, I will throw you under a camel!